User:Cnaylor1955/Taylor Holden

Taylor Holden,, who is better known as Wendy Holden, is a former journalist and experienced author with more than twenty non-fiction books to her credit. Her first novel, The Sense of Paper, was published in September 2006 to widespread critical acclaim. She has two more novels in development. She will have three books published in 2011 - Lady Blue Eyes, the memoir of Frank Sinatra's widow Barbara: Kill Switch with Bill Shaw, a former British soldier wrongly imprisoned in Afghanistan: and Ten Mindful Minutes, her second book with Goldie Hawn, about the actresses quest to bring mindfulness to children and their parents.

A reporter for eighteen years, the last ten of which were spent writing for the London Daily Telegraph, she has – as Wendy Holden - covered news events at home and abroad, including the Persian Gulf War, the Iran/Iraq War, as well as conflicts throughout the Middle East, Communist Europe and Northern Ireland.

Her non-fiction titles have chiefly been ghosted autobiographies of remarkable women, many with wartime experiences, such as the international bestseller Tomorrow to the Brave, the story of the only woman in the French Foreign Legion during World War II; Behind Enemy Lines, about a young Jewish woman who repeatedly crossed German lines as a spy; and Till the Sun Grows Cold, the bestselling memoir of a British mother whose daughter married a Sudanese warlord before being killed. She has also written A Lotus Grows in the Mud, the The Sunday Times and The New York Times bestselling autobiography of actress Goldie Hawn, Memories Are Made of This, a biography of Dean Martin as seen through his daughter's eyes, and the number one bestseller Journey to the Edge of the World with Billy Connolly. She also co-wrote Pauline Prescott's moving autobiography Smile Though Your Heart is Breaking, published in 2010.

Her work has been serialised in national newspapers and magazines around the globe, selected for audio extracts on BBC Radio, used in schools and colleges as educational tools, and transferred to both commercial television and radio drama. She has written two screenplays, and is an occasional editor with The Writer's Workshop, a leading British literary consultancy.

Other works have included Heaven and Hell: My Life with the Eagles with Don Felder, Central 822, the autobiography of a pioneering policewoman at Scotland Yard, (serialised on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour); Biting the Bullet, the remarkable life story of an SAS wife (serialised in The Sun newspaper); Footprints in the Snow, the story of a paraplegic who had a revolutionary implant in her spine (made into a TV drama starring Caroline Quentin and Kevin Whateley), plus the bestselling novelisations of the films The Full Monty and Waking Ned. She also wrote Shell Shock, a searing investigation into the trauma of conflict from the World War I to the Gulf War, and Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, a highly controversial book, banned in Ireland, on the Irish abortion case.

The Sense of Paper was her first novel. She lives in Suffolk, England, with her husband and dogs. Her website is: www.wendyholden.com

External links

• Taylor Holden's website

Category:Living people Category:1960 births Category:American journalists Category:American non-fiction writers Category:Daily Telegraph journalists Category:Ghostwriters